Game:

Fatal Fury Special (1993)

Duration: 33:20

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6

A slightly better capture after playing around with the camera a bit more. Considering this was captured via a webcam, I'm quite pleased with the outcome, though there are still some parts which can be heavy on the eyes. I also captured the audio directly from the game this time since I thought this might be less annoying than bad audio with permanent clicking in the background. ;) Sadly again no Ryo since the AI trolled me with the supers at the end of the game.

Old description:
Fatal Fury Special for the PC-Engine is a really great version of the game and probably one of the best ports of a Neo Geo game before the 32-Bit era. Controls, timing of combos and recognition of commands – everything feels like it should be and pretty close if not identical to the NG-version. There might be some slight differences (for example chipp-damage won’t KO on the NG if there is still life left) but it’s ridiculously close, especially considering the hardware this runs on. Same goes for the sprites, which obviously have lost some color depth and have been squeezed a bit horizontally, but thanks to the lower horizontal resolution in general and the Sprites thus getting stretched a bit compared to their NG-counterparts, they look almost as big, which is quite the feat for a PCE-game. Especially considering how almost all of the animations (even stuff like Andi’s defensive walkcycle when he walks backwards) are there while the devs had to manage to fit all the sprite data into the ram in two sizes since the PCE obviously has no hardware-scaling. Not to forget the several voice-samples per character which are also all present - with only the sound effects sounding a bit weak due to them being generated via the PSG.
Several of the backdrops - especially Duck’s - have lost some of the more prominent eye-catchers or were simplified a bit but most still look very nice, with a few like the one from Krauser or Tung’s and Terry’s stage looking especially well and come very close to the original versions. Even the stage intros of those which have one are all there. It’s still probably the only aspect where the SFC-port has a slight edge on the PCE-version. Since the SFC-port totally sucks when it comes to the gameplay, that doesn’t do it much good though sadly.

Arcade-difficulty is I guess supposed to be the equivalent to Lvl4 on MVS? Not absolutely sure since I haven’t directly compared both versions in that regard. Anway, clearing the game without continues is quite easy compared to other SNK-games. It just looks very silly and is a bit boring I guess, since you mostly do stuff to manipulate the AI instead of flashy combos, which you mostly won’t get the opportunity for.

An "interesting" aspect of playing against the AI is that you have to employ a feature you normally wouldn't use nearly as much when playing the game in versus: the lane-switching. Since the AI cheats a lot by reading inputs, doing impossible dodge-attacks and not needing charge for charge specials, it is often the only safe way to bait and counter the AI opponents. So if you see me jumping back and forth the whole time, it's simply because of that and not to annoy any potential viewer. XD
For some weird reason almost all of the bosses are easy to bait by doing a neutral jump when they get close. Maybe the devs tried to compensate for their stages not having lanes?

The game itself is still one of my favorites among the more classical fighting games of that era and imo the first really good fighter SNK released. Practically their first game with which they were finally able to compete with Capcom and SF2 on the gameplay-side of things. It’s thus no surprise that it is still frequently played at places like the Mikado Arcade. You should check out their streams if you have not done so yet btw. ;)

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